> I saw a family member go from diagnosis to death from stage 4 cancer and several things just feel off to me. The timeline of the posts, with an initial expected death by end of April, then extended to next winter then a sudden "routine scan" that brings to back to end of April feels odd to me.
That is not odd at all.
You start off with a rough estimate based on the survival rates of other people with the same or similar diagnosis.
That's your first expected date. You start planning around it. (In her case, planning active measures to end her life while she could.)
Then you outlive it -- because after all, a median date implies people do outlive it. And that actually gives you hope and purpose which allows you less pain and perhaps even fewer symptoms.
And then a scan brings you right back to the median again, or much less.
Because the cancer isn't the diagnosis, or the scans. There are loads of other unseen variables.
This story repeats again and again; very few people die the way or when they expect to. A lot of people go suddenly after a long time of inexorable progress, some from secondary disease that can sometimes be avoided, and other people rally and then fade.
I wrote this quickly while I was trying to think back through the way I lost a relative to cancer, and I suppose this brief bit kind of makes no sense because it sounds non-linear:
"And then a scan brings you right back to the median again, or much less."
What I meant here is that the first diagnosis is not the last. Once you start doing well, other treatments become possible that weren't possible without extra evidence or without some remission. And they give you hope -- they extend where you think you'll get to; which life events you will see. You might get to a kind of remission that surprises even the doctors; they try to help you understand how long you might now have.
But parts of this are like Monty Hall -- some of the probabilities are new, but some are from the original diagnosis all the same.
The diagnosis isn't the cancer, and the lump of cancer they are watching might not be the offshoot that does the final damage.
My SIL was diagnosed with MM. At that time, the life expectancy was 6 mo - 2 years. And then thanks to being at the right place at the right time, she went into 5 separate clinical trials and lived 10 years. But then very suddenly, it returned and she was dead in a matter of weeks.
That is not odd at all.
You start off with a rough estimate based on the survival rates of other people with the same or similar diagnosis.
That's your first expected date. You start planning around it. (In her case, planning active measures to end her life while she could.)
Then you outlive it -- because after all, a median date implies people do outlive it. And that actually gives you hope and purpose which allows you less pain and perhaps even fewer symptoms.
And then a scan brings you right back to the median again, or much less.
Because the cancer isn't the diagnosis, or the scans. There are loads of other unseen variables.
This story repeats again and again; very few people die the way or when they expect to. A lot of people go suddenly after a long time of inexorable progress, some from secondary disease that can sometimes be avoided, and other people rally and then fade.